Council Housing

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for his timely intervention. He is of course absolutely correct. One issue we have had over recent decades is that so much of this property has fallen into the hands of landlords and others, the investment has not been made, and they are now charging extortionate rents. Had it been left to local authority provision, those renting would be able to afford the properties more readily.

Organisations that bid for Government grants were told to re-let homes for low-cost social rent at the new so-called “affordable rent”. It is now estimated that 150,000 homes for social rent have been lost in the past five years. More recently, the Government proposed to add to the sell-off by extending the right to buy to housing association tenants, funded by an extraordinary forced sell-off of council housing to the highest bidder.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I associate myself with my hon. Friend’s points and the genuine and deep concern that he shows for the needs of tenants throughout the country, many of whom are struggling with high housing costs, as indeed they are in my constituency. Does he agree that it was an outrageous mistake and serious error by the Conservative Government to stop many local authorities building council houses when they had fully costed schemes that were ready to go and, indeed, shovel-ready? Reading had a plan for 1,000 new council houses, but unfortunately it was stopped by George Osborne in 2015.

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely correct. There is a suppression of building low-cost rental properties by local authorities. Those local authorities know that there is a need, and we must allow them to have that responsibility. Preventing them from supplying that housing has had a huge social and economic cost in our communities.

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend once again. Not only is she very well informed, but she is very experienced in this matter. She is absolutely right. The high levels of housing that we have needed over the decades have been delivered by a mix of providers. The crucial element that is now missing is the housing that is provided by local authorities. In its absence, we will never achieve the objective that has been set by the current Government. If we look through the decades, we can see how, in the post-war periods of the 20s and then the 50s and 60s, the local authorities were allowed to ensure a good supply of housing, which they recognised was needed because of the constraints in the private sector.

It is worth looking at this matter in the round. Over the past 10 years, the overall supply of new homes has seen an under-delivery of at least 80,000 to 100,000 homes a year. The result is that the UK faces a desperate shortage of at least 1 million homes. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors now forecasts that we will reach a shortage of 1.8 million low-cost rental properties—that is just low-cost rental properties—by 2022.

All areas of the UK need housing, both public and private, but there is particular and desperate need for low-cost housing for rent. In my constituency there are more than 2,400 people on the housing waiting list. Homes are being built, but not enough are under construction to satisfy this social need. Once again, it is the wrong mix of housing that is being delivered. So, what is the answer? Of course, opinions vary, and the solutions presented to the electorate in last year’s election showed clear blue water between the main parties.

Recognising the critical importance of the housing shortage in its 2017 manifesto, Labour committed to the creation of a new department for housing. Importantly, on house building, we promised at least 1 million new homes over the next Parliament, which, as we now know, can be a very short time, and a new target of 250,000 new homes a year being built by 2022. Of those, at least 100,000 per year, or 40% minimum, would be genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy per year, including the biggest council house building programme in more than 30 years. If I am honest, I would personally like to see a lot more.

Subsequently, at the autumn party conferences, much time and debate were given over to this challenge, and the Prime Minister announced that she was committed to delivering 300.000 new homes. Specifically, she stated that £2 billion would be committed to helping the delivery of affordable housing, but, of course, that equates to just 25,000 properties. Clearly, housing is rising up the political agenda, and it is now one of the biggest domestic issues that we face.

My contention is that we now face a social crisis that is without precedent in the past 50 years. We have thousands of families without their own homes, waiting desperately for accommodation. We have record numbers of people rough sleeping. In my constituency of Warwick and Leamington, we have the highest number in terms of people per 1,000 of the population in the whole of the west midlands. Over the decades, the overall supply of housing has not delivered. Now must be the time to change that.

I am convinced that council housing was, is and will be the answer to our housing crisis. The Government need to release local authorities from the bounds of their borrowing cap and allow them to use their pension funds to invest in their communities. The use of public land holds the key to unlocking the potential to deliver this. Simply selling public land to the highest bidder will not solve anything. Land is the fundamental denominator in the cost equation of UK housing, and the planning process surrounding it needs urgent, radical reform.

Building more council housing solves at least two key problems: first, the lack of genuinely affordable housing for those who cannot afford market rents; and secondly, the chronic under-supply of housing that is the root cause of our housing crisis. As I said, there is a lack of genuinely affordable housing, with historically high waiting lists of 1.16 million households nationally. The easiest way to help those in need is to provide council housing. If we fail to do this, the result will be increasing homelessness, which we have witnessed more than doubling nationally since 2010. Another, less frequently made, argument is that building more council housing is the key to boosting overall supply, thereby addressing the root cause of the UK’s housing crisis.

The Government’s own target is to build 300,000 new homes each year, but the number of additional homes delivered in 2016-17 was 217,000, falling well short of their target. Although last year was the first year since the financial crisis in which over 200,000 homes were added—and I do applaud that—it was not enough, and the wrong mix of homes is being built. It is now stated that 300,000 houses would just about keep up with demand. Even if the Government hit this target, it is unlikely to bring down house prices and rents significantly. Also, in order to deliver those 300,000 houses, we need all providers to be supplying into the process.

History provides important lessons. It is no coincidence that house building rates reached their post-war peak during the 1950s and ’60s, when successive Governments were committed both to private sector and public sector house building. At the time, housing was plentiful and house prices stayed low, so that many on low to average incomes could afford to rent or buy their own homes. The success of the ’50s and ’60s shows that prioritising council housing need not be a partisan issue. Harold Macmillan, the Conservative Housing Minister from 1951 to 1954, initiated some of the greatest council house building programmes in order to meet his target of building 300,000 homes a year. During those Macmillan years, local authority housing made up 87%, 84%, 77% and 69% of completed dwellings per year respectively. This compares with just 1% in each of the past four years under this Government—or about 20% each year if we include housing associations as well as councils. Importantly, as I have illustrated elsewhere—I want to give credit where it is due—post-war Conservatives recognised that the public sector must build the homes that the private sector will not build during a housing crisis, which is where we find ourselves.

So why will this Government not do that? I would like to believe that it is not simply ideology that says that the state is bad while the private sector is good and will solve all our problems, because this crisis is holding back our country socially and—I cannot stress this enough—economically. I believe that there is a duty on one-nation Conservatives to come forward and urge the Government to commit to a mass council house building programme if they are serious about solving our housing crisis. In this light, I have recently relaunched, with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), the parliamentary campaign for council housing. I invite all MPs to get involved with this cross-party initiative that aims to see more council houses being built.

Central Government policy currently acts as a disincentive for councils to build more council homes: first, because, there is next to no funding from central Government for the provision of council housing; and secondly, because there has been just £5.9 billion gross investment in social housing in 2015-16 compared with £10 billion in 2009-10, and the vast majority of this will be directed to housing associations.

This compares with the £22 billion forecast to be spent on housing benefit in the 2017-18 financial year, which is a direct result of not building the housing we need. Is that not ironic? Surely the Government would rather not line the pockets of landlords in the private sector, but prefer to invest long term in the council housing that we need. Is that not pragmatic? The additional £2 billion investment announced by the Prime Minister at the conference was welcome, but it will only provide a few thousand homes by 2021, including the affordable homes that can be anything up to 80% of the market rent. The money is not ring-fenced for genuinely affordable social rents.

As I said earlier, the borrowing cap stifles a council’s ability to build where councils can currently only borrow up to a certain amount to invest in council housing. I welcome the announcement in the Budget that the Government will raise the cap by a total of £1 billion for areas under high affordability pressures, but more needs to be done. If the Government accept that the cap stifles building, why will they not lift it entirely for all areas, as has been done in Scotland?

[Matt Rodda]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a considerable need for greater house building in high-cost areas, and that there is actually a lot of available land in many of those areas? There certainly is in Reading. In our case, it is brownfield land from our light industrial past, and I assume that that may also be the case in Warwick and Leamington. Does he agree that urgent Government action is needed to free up that land in order to support the local economy in those areas and to support local public services? There is a particular pressure on local schools and the NHS in my constituency, as people move to lower-cost areas. Will he endorse my points?

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for his informed and relevant intervention. He is of course absolutely right that this essentially leads to what may be described as social cleansing. We may actually be creating ghettoes of particular types of community, when we should be striving for sustainable, balanced communities for our economic and social good. I totally endorse my hon. Friend’s points.

It is estimated that lifting the cap would allow £7 billion to be injected over five years, providing an additional 60,000 council homes. Even the Treasury Committee, chaired by the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), has called for this and stated:

“raising the cap would have no material impact on the national debt, but could result in a substantial increase in the supply of housing.”

The Local Government Association agrees. In my view, we should lift the cap entirely and take borrowing to invest in council housing off the country’s balance sheet, as is standard in other European countries. Why not?

Returning to the use of land and its availability, there is clearly much land available, but it is questionable in terms of its efficient use. As my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East just alluded to, there is land—including public sector and brownfield land—but it is all about the planning process and how that land is brought into the equation in order to deliver affordable housing. The current planning policy framework makes it prohibitively expensive for this to happen. The whole process needs radical reform.

Councils are currently incentivised to sell off the overpriced land that they own to highest bidder, rather than to use it for the common good. This needs to be reconsidered urgently. I am calling for us to recognise this national crisis in housing by legislating for all unused local authority and public sector land to be used exclusively for council housing. That is the nature of the crisis we face.

The inflated land prices across the country are preventing local authorities from being able to assemble the land to build on. Land is currently priced at its potential future development value, rather than at its existing use value, as is done in other countries. This pushes up the cost of undeveloped land that would be suitable for housing development, making investment in council housing more expensive. Bizarrely, it also rewards landowners for housing and infrastructure developments to which they do not contribute.

The homelessness charity Shelter has argued that a few small reforms to the Land Compensation Act 1961 and associated legislation on compulsory purchase orders would enable local authorities to purchase land at a fair market value—one that reflects both the current value of the land and reasonable compensation, and allows for the delivery of high-quality, affordable developments. This is not rocket science; it is not complicated. That is what they do in other countries in Europe and elsewhere. It is just about changing the planning approach so that it favours the local authorities.

Houses in Multiple Occupation: Combined Planning Applications

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Hanson, for the opportunity to speak briefly in the debate. I welcome the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) on this important issue and I congratulate him on securing the debate. I want to speak briefly in support of the hon. Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) and also my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), and make two points.

The first point is about the sheer proliferation of HMOs in urban Britain today. In my experience as a former councillor and now as an MP for a town in the country some way from London, the scale is quite significant and might not be fully recognised by all colleagues. Some 28% of the housing in Reading is now privately rented, and a significant proportion are HMOs. The typical issues that we face in our town may well be familiar to colleagues representing similar sorts of towns with similar street layouts. We have a lot of Victorian and 1920s housing. We have a limited amount of street space for parking—it is not like a rural area, with driveways or land at the side of buildings. One of the big challenges that we face—I suspect that other hon. Members may face it in their constituencies—is the sheer volume of cars generated by HMOs, in what are already densely populated areas.

The second serious and practical problem is the large number of additional refuse bins that are created. That might sound like a mundane matter, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North pointed out, a sudden change in the housing ownership on a quiet street can dramatically alter its appearance. It can be quite disturbing for local residents to suddenly see large numbers of new bins popping up in front gardens and large numbers of cars. The other issue is that many small front gardens become overgrown and much less attractive. It can be quite a dramatic change for residents who are used to living in a settled urban environment—and who are often from a range of age groups, from young couples and single people to elderly people—to suddenly have a proliferation of very often temporary residents who are unable to stay in the area for long and, as a result, unfortunately unable to put down roots.

I would also like to speak up for the residents in HMOs and to consider things from their perspective, because part of the issue is the wider lack of housing supply in the country, particularly in hotspot areas. I do not know about Northampton, but I suspect that, like us, it may face a chronic lack of housing. Part of the problem is that there is just not enough affordable housing for young people and people moving into these areas. Although this is not quite at the rates found in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North, I know someone who recently had to pay £300,000 for a two-bedroom terraced house in Reading town centre. That is pretty expensive. What we really need is more affordable housing to buy and more affordable council housing to rent.

I urge the Government to look into this. The article 4 directions offer some ability for local councils to intervene, but they are wholly inadequate. If the Minister can comment on that and suggest ways of enhancing legislation, I will be extremely grateful.

Local Authority Financial Sustainability: NAO Report

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Amesbury]

I agree with my hon. Friend and former colleague on Manchester City Council.

Councils of all colours and types are near breaking point. Indeed, Conservative-run Northamptonshire County Council has already reached that point, although, as the report shows, any suggestion that its funding challenges are unique is wide of the mark. Some 10.2% of local authorities have less than two years’ reserves. They are at breaking point, and we could face another 15 being served with section 114 notices. It is only through the sound financial management of most councils that we have not seen more local authorities topple.

Warnings have come from councils across party politics and from the cross-party Local Government Association. The National Audit Office report confirms what those at the frontline of local government have been saying for years: funding is down by almost 50%, while demand for services such as adult and children’s social care and homelessness support rises. Lack of central Government support has meant that the tax burden has shifted to local taxpayers. The National Audit Office concludes that:

“As funding continues to tighten for local authorities and pressure from social care grows, there are risks to statutory services.”

Those findings are stark and should alarm us all, and not just in politics but well beyond. The picture that the report paints is familiar to Halton Borough Council and Cheshire West and Chester Council in my constituency, as it will be across the country. Pressures on some areas of children’s services have increased by 26% in Cheshire and by 83% in the more deprived Halton, as my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) pointed out, yet the recent Budget failed to offer more money for that vital area of responsibility. That would be damaging enough when taken in isolation, but when we consider the human and future economic costs of failing our vulnerable children, it is truly damning. By 2020 the shortfall for children’s services will be a massive £2 billion.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

One of the great problems for many children’s services departments operating in areas of high housing cost is that it is particularly difficult to recruit staff. We have a severe problem with that in Reading. We are outside the boundary for outer London weighting, which stops at Bracknell, even though that is an area of lower housing costs, and we suffer from a severe shortage of skilled workers to work in our children’s services departments. I understand that is a common problem for local authorities, and particularly for those in areas of high housing costs. There are issues with both pay for staff at those grades and the ability of local authorities to provide their own council housing. Reading had a plan to build 1,000 council houses, which sadly was stopped by George Osborne. Would my hon. Friend like to comment on the twin problems of low pay for key staff and the inability of local authorities to build housing for them?

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I wholeheartedly endorse and support the Bill. Along with the financial strains placed on my constituents by the ever-rising cost of living, coupled with the wage stagnation that many of them have suffered, Reading has some serious and substantial problems with poor-quality private accommodation.

Although the council has been robust in tackling rogue landlords, much more clearly needs to be done. I wish briefly to run through some of the issues that we have in our area. Reading Borough Council has on a number of occasions taken legal action against unscrupulous landlords who have allowed their properties to fall into such decline as to cause safety and environmental health concerns. Such action has resulted in considerable financial penalties and in conditions being imposed through the court system.

It is unfortunate that there are some landlords whose properties do not meet the standards that every tenant has the right to expect. Nobody should have to live in a property that has mouldy walls, faulty electrical sockets, holes in the ceiling, open drains or cockroach infestation, yet in recent years we have seen these issues in a relatively wealthy town in the south-east of England, which is something that I find deeply disturbing and, indeed, shocking.

There has also been a significant ramping up of the price of rented properties, while the standards for many renters have, sadly, declined at an alarming rate. The impact of living in such squalor is not only a financial one, as we have already heard from other Members. There have been instances in my area of local people having to visit their family doctor, or even go to A&E, with illnesses that are quite clearly born out of the unsavoury conditions in which they are having to live. I should point out that the scale of this issue is interesting given the relative wealth of the town that I represent. Currently, 28% of Reading’s housing stock is privately rented—that indicates the size in many of our small to medium-sized towns across the country. The town’s population has grown at a rapid rate, but the infrastructure is not able to support that. That includes the lack of supply of affordable housing. With demand outstripping supply, there has been a profusion of flats, bedsits and studios for rent appearing across the town, often at exorbitant prices. I should add that Reading Borough Council did have a plan to build 1,000 new council houses, but, sadly, in the summer 2015 Budget, the plan was stopped.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentioned the issue of healthy accommodation. Does he agree that, actually, poor-quality rented, unhealthy accommodation is not only terrible for those living in it, but a drain on the NHS? I have heard of a number of cases where, perhaps, an elderly person is needing to be discharged from hospital, or a premature baby to be brought back home for the first time, but they are not able to be discharged from hospital because the home to which they are returning is not safe.

[Matt Rodda]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for her contribution. It is a very sad, but salient, point that this is indeed happening and putting unwanted pressure on our NHS at a time of great strain on the service and, indeed, when the Government have had to cancel many non-urgent operations during this winter crisis. In fact, she has brought up many points that I wished to make, so, for the sake of brevity and allowing other hon. Members to speak, I will conclude my remarks by thanking her and saying that I appreciate the all-party support for this Bill and the initiative and determination of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) in bringing it forward.